“In this fleeting life, there is nothing stronger than a visual idea or moment stopped in time forever. And nothing does this better than a black-and-white photograph.”

“Photography wasn’t even considered part of the art world until fairly recently. I find it ironic that some people in the world of fine-art photography consider digital photography as somehow “less artistic,” when it is merely a change in process, not vision. The debates will always be there, but your vision is yours alone.”

“Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.”

“Once upon a time there was a dwarf knight who only had fifty words to live in and they were so fleeting that he only had time to put on a suit of armor and ride swiftly on a black horse into a very well-lit woods where he vanished forever.”

“To begin with, you've got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself.”

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.”

“The southern whites would rather have had Negroes who stole, work for them than Negroes who knew, however dimly, the worth of their own humanity. Hence, whites placed a premium upon black deceit; they encouraged irresponsibility; and their rewards were bestowed upon us blacks in the degree that we could make them feel safe and superior.”